British Columbia Premier David Eby used the BC Council of Forest Industries (COFI) conference to challenge the United States to source its wood from Canada rather than Europe and Russia, warning that American consumers are paying the price for a dispute the federal government has been too slow to resolve.
Eby told delegates that the United States lacks the domestic production capacity to meet its own demand, and has turned to unlikely suppliers to fill the shortfall.
“They have dramatically increased imports of wood from Europe, and from Russia of all places, in order to fill that gap,” he said. “It is more expensive for American consumers, it drives up the cost of homebuilding.”
The premier outlined a range of government measures aimed at stabilising the sector, including B.C.’s planned trade mission to China and continued investment in value-added manufacturing and mass-timber construction, as Wood Central has reported in recent months.
Beyond the trade fight, Eby acknowledged that market volatility and extreme weather continue to compound pressures on an industry already absorbing 45 per cent in combined tariffs and duties on its softwood exports.
Conservative critics at the conference challenged the government’s record on regulatory issues, pointing to permit backlogs as a structural drag on industry competitiveness. Ward Stamer, MLA for Kamloops-North Thompson and the BC Conservative critic for forests, said that while the government has promoted a reduction in cutting permit processing times — from 40 days to 25 — the end-to-end approval timeline has ballooned from 18 months to three years.
“So when they say we’re the most expensive in North America, they’re not kidding,” Stamer said. “And then you add the tariffs and some of the other things that are going on in the process, we’re just one phone call away from shutting another mill down.”
Trevor Halford, interim leader of the BC Conservatives, said the province’s permitting failures have already cost workers their jobs, with layoffs and mill closures flowing directly from a system he described as broken at the door. Halford also pointed to ongoing commercial uncertainty stemming from the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, which B.C. courts have been applying in decisions that Halford said trace back to Eby’s tenure as then-attorney general.
“So if you’re going to believe that now he has the solutions to fix this, I think not only is the forestry industry sceptical, but I think all British Columbians are,” he said.
The convention’s stakes were set the day before Eby took the stage, when Niquidet warned ahead of the opening session that B.C.’s timber supply chain is now in a full-scale crisis, driven by the twin weight of Washington’s duty regime and a domestic regulatory environment that has choked off access to fibre — the industry’s primary cost driver. The province’s forest sector supports approximately 95,000 jobs, with roughly a quarter of those positions in the Lower Mainland alone, spanning direct production, transportation, and supply chain roles.
